


Forget Your Perfect Offering

by Leela



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Not Quite Oblivious, Post-Nogitsune, References to Off-Screen Prostitution, Stiles Runs Away, coming home, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:43:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leela/pseuds/Leela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night after night, month after month, year after year, city after city, Stiles keeps moving. The dreams of blood and arrows chase after him like Furies, as they've done ever since he ran from Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted a WIP before; usually I wait until a story is complete to start posting. For reasons beyond explanation, I need to post this one as I write it. I'll update the tags and rating as the story progresses.
> 
> I promise to finish this. And I did!!!!
> 
> The title is from [Anthem by Leonard Cohen](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/anthem.html).

Stiles dreams of blood, of red beads that well up and drip slowly to splash on the floor. Each drop is accompanied by a howl of pain and loss, by a sharply honed arrow that flies toward him and flays into his skin.

Night after night, month after month, year after year, city after city, he keeps moving. The blood and arrows chase after him like Furies, as they've done ever since he ran from Beacon Hills. 

He hasn't completely cut himself off. He texts his dad regularly, calls him occasionally and always on each of their birthdays, and doesn't disable the GPS on his phone, because his dad promised he'd send someone after him if Stiles did that. Stiles also randomly searches out and sends ridiculous postcards to his friends and pack members, because he needs them to remember him even if he can't afford to think about them too often. 

Some towns, he manages to get a job waiting tables or washing dishes. When he's desperate for gas money, he sells his mouth or his fingers. But never his ass, because that's a commitment he's not ready to make. 

Five days after Stiles' twenty-first birthday, the Jeep gives up the ghost in Vancouver, Canada. He can't spare the money to pay to have her towed to the dead car cemetery. So he unscrews her license plates and files down her identification numbers until even his dad's best deputy couldn't figure out what they used to be. He purifies her with sage, mountain ash, and salt water that he dipped out of English Bay before abandoning her to fate and the Vancouver Police Department.

After watching the sun go down over the water, Stiles walks. His heart is aching with the loss, mourning not just the car that survived so much but a childhood that really wasn't, and he almost revels in the fact that he's feeling something. 

He's walking across some street somewhere when he trips over the bright colors beneath his feet. There's a rainbow across the road, and it feels like a sign out of nowhere. 

A restaurant on the side of the road has tables outside, and Stiles collapses in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs. 

"What can I get you, darling?" The waiter is cute and short with a name-tag that identifies him as Mickey. He's a twink's twink at first glance, but his eyes have a steely depth that makes Stiles smile. 

_A coke_ is on Stiles' lips but he changes his mind before saying it. "Something alcoholic," he says, digging in his pocket for his wallet and ID. 

Mickey pokes at the picture with a long, red-tipped fingernail. "You have to be more specific than that."

"I don't know. Not beer or wine." Stiles drags a hand through his hair. "Surprise me? Something sharp not sweet?"

After giving Stiles an assessing look, Mickey nods. "Okay, darling. I'll get you something to ease that pain."

Stiles almost changes his mind a hundred times before Mickey returns with a tall drink on his tray. The liquid is clear, but the umbrella is bright red and that makes up for a lot. 

"This one's on the house." Mickey puts it on the table with a flourish that's half curtsey and half bow. "Next one is on you," he says, "and so's the tip."

The nameless drink is smooth going down but has a bite that makes Stiles want to give it a stupid name that includes moon or wolf. He takes another sip, longer this time, and tells himself that the catch in his throat is because it went down wrong.

By the time he's drained the last drops from the glass, Stiles is feeling loose and easy, as if he stands half a chance of doing anything. He has his phone out and is playing the app he likes to call Son of Sudoku because the real name sucks kanima balls. 

A woman laughs nearby, warm and light and terrifyingly like home. The sound jolts through him, distracts him enough that his fingers jitter and slide over his phone. Not only does he kill his game, but he finds himself staring at a dial screen. One that's dialing his dad, when he's not ready to talk.

His heart pounding, his breathing moving way too close to hyperventilation, Stiles stabs the End button. When his phone starts buzzing with a return call, he flips to text as fast as he can.

 _Mistake_ , he types, or at least intends to type — thankfully auto-correct is on his side this time and changes 'Mostaje' to the word he wants. _I'm ok._

After a long half-second, his phone stops buzzing. Then the typing icon appears forever until his dad texts, _All right. I'll let it go this time, but don't do it again._

There's a brief break, punctuated by another laugh from the same woman, before Stiles can type, _Promise. X my heart, hope not to die._.

_Call me Sunday._

Stiles doesn't respond to that — although he checks to see what day of the week it is — and he can't relax until several minutes have passed without a text from his dad. 

"You look like you need another," Mickey says, putting a second drink down and taking the empty glass away. He gives Stiles a thoughtful look that goes just a shade too deep for Stiles' comfort, and then he gives the back of Stiles' hand a soft tap. "Nothing's that bad, darling. Not even the end of the world as you know it."

A harsh snicker rasps out of Stiles. "You have no idea."

"Neither do you," Mickey says. He straightens up and gestures at the street with one hand. "I can point you to a hundred people who think they destroyed everything that matters, and maybe some of them even did. But every single one of them has someone who wishes they were still around to see the world they created. Trust me on that one."

Mickey's gone, already teasing and flirting with the guys two tables over, before Stiles can come up with a reply. He picks up his drink and takes a long swallow.

Stiles is halfway through his second drink, back to kicking Son of Sudoku ass, when the woman laughs again. The familiarity is almost painful. He glances sideways out of the corner of his eye just in time to see her flick long, dark hair over her shoulder in a gesture he's seen more times than he can count.

He's on his feet, dropping a rainbow of colorful bills and coins that are probably worth far more than the two drinks and jumping the low barrier to the sidewalk before his brain can spit out the name that goes with the laugh, the hair, the gesture.

 _Cora_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: the lovely @eeyore9990

Stiles runs. Cora's laughter echoes in his ears, bright and sharp enough to cut the clumsily stitched together patchwork of his soul. His backpack bangs against his lower back hard enough to bruise. He stops when he can't ignore the stitch in his side any longer. Leaning over to brace himself, he places his hands just above his knees and tries to stretch out his back and muscles.

His lungs fill with air that tastes like salt water and car exhaust. He blinks tears out of his eyes. And when he tries to straighten up, he falls on his ass.

The sand is soft, but it still jolts him and drives an _Oof_ out of him. He sits there for a moment, stunned. "What the fuck were you thinking?" he mutters. "You know better than to try to outrun a werewolf."

Reminded, he sits still for a moment and listens. Traffic buzzes along the streets behind him. A child cries briefly. No laughter though and, he's pretty sure, no looming werewolves. He squints into the darkness, peering around. There are a couple of guys getting into it a few feet away, and he can see the shadows of a few more people talking behind him, but no one looks even remotely familiar. 

Hissing an "Awesome," he grins at the sliver of moon that peeks out from behind the clouds. 

Then, his brain kicks into gear, and his heart trips a beat. His phone is in his back pocket. That he just landed on. Rolling over to the side, he digs it out and stares at the dark screen. There's not quite enough light coming from the street to see clearly. So, casting a prayer out to the winds, because that's about as far as he's willing to believe these days, Stiles presses the On button. The phone glows bright, clear, and unbroken. 

He strokes his fingers over the screen, loving and needy. "You're not allowed to break, okay? I'm not the best in the world at staying in touch, but my dad would chase me down if I lost you. And find me too. He's super annoying that way."

A wave crashes into the shore, temporarily drowning out other noises, and Stiles can't help but strain to hear. His muscles tense, ready for fight or flight, and he tries to remember the layout of the beach and the location of the logs with their dubious protection.

A second or so later, the sound of the waves fades back to a gentle susurrus, and Stiles' phone blinks into darkness. He lets out the breath he was holding, as if that could possibly have helped him to hear better, and clicks his phone back on again. 

He flicks through the pages of apps, randomly tapping on some of his favorites, checking that everything's fine. Then his finger slides off Nasty Bats and right onto one of the camera apps, which opens to a shot of the pack from the bonfire that their class had right after graduation.

The picture is a punch in the gut. He looks like shit, way too skinny with circles so dark under his eyes that if he didn't know better, he'd think he'd just had his nose broken. His body language is off the charts, half-kneeling, almost like a sprinter in the starting blocks. Scott's got a hand on his shoulder, grip tight enough to wrinkle Stiles' shirt, holding him in place.

It's like the whole thing happened yesterday. Stiles can hear everyone talking, drowning out the sounds of the water, traffic, people...

☽ o ☾

"C'mon, Stiles," Scott said, pulling Stiles to his feet as soon as Derek told them they could relax. "Chill out for once and let it all go. We've got beer and a promise from your dad that we won't be arrested as long as we don't burn the preserve down."

"Not gonna happen," Derek muttered from his perch at the edge of the clearing, as far away from the bonfire as he could get and still watch over them. He had his back against a big tree, his legs stretched out in front of him, an e-reader in one hand, and a fire extinguisher within easy reach of the other.

"And we're grateful for that." Scott flashed Derek a grin before grabbing a couple of bottles from the cooler. He popped the caps off them and handed one to Stiles.

Getting drunk and losing control was the last thing Stiles wanted, but he was beyond tired of fighting with Scott. So he raised the bottle to his mouth and swallowed down a small sip of beer. 

Scott bumped shoulders and dragged him over to a spot on the opposite side of the bonfire from Derek. "This is it. The last summer of fun and freedom. The beginning of the end of our lives. Nothing but growing up and growing old from now on." He took a long drink, draining almost half of the bottle, "We made it, dude," he said and let out an enormous burp. 

"Dork." 

"Pig is more accurate," Lydia called out. 

Greenberg pulled the tip of his nose up into a pig-face and made a snorting noise, and everyone started laughing. 

"Oh my god. Someone promise me that's not going to follow me to Stanford," Malia said. 

"As if." Lydia sniffed. 

"Hey," Greenberg said, faking being offended. "I got in to college." Then he burped, louder and longer than Scott.

"I think we've got a challenger for the title," Danny said. "Better watch out, Scott."

"No way. Dude is going down." Scott scrambled to his feet and went over to the cooler, coming back with another round of beer.

It was a Burp Battle Royale after that, with all the guys and Malia going for the title. Stiles moved a bit further away from the fire into the edges of the shadows. He picked at the label on the bottle he wasn't drinking, purposefully dragging it out, peeling off one tiny strip at a time, absolutely not paying any attention to the empty spaces around the fire.

"You're an idiot."

Stiles glanced up at Lydia, who was looming over him, and then returned his attention to the label.

She sat down next to him, graceful as ever. "Most of these clowns don't know what happened or that you were involved."

Stiles shrugged.

"Nobody holds you responsible but you." 

_I should have killed myself._ The words stuck in Stiles' throat for the thousandth time. It's too late to do it now, when Allison, Aiden, and everyone else are dead. But if he'd done it then, when shit first started getting real...

Lydia kicked him, the pointed toe of her boot sharp and painful through his pants. "No one."

"You're right," Stiles said, because there wasn't anything else he could say. "As always."

The way that she flipped her hair back from her face and twirled one strand around her finger told him that she wasn't fooled. "Of course I am, and you should remember that." 

A chorus of cheers came from the other side of the fire, and Scott was capering madly, pumping his arms in the air. 

"That's my boy," Stiles said. 

"And he's coming over here to prove it as well." Lydia rose to her feet, dusting off non-existent leaves and grass. She took a step, then turned to look down at him. "We're having coffee on Tuesday afternoon, usual place at 4pm. Time to start planning strategy for our first year at Stanford." 

She was gone before Stiles could say no. 

"Still the king," Scott crowed, pumping a fist into the air and flopping down next to Stiles.

"Mom would be so proud," Stiles said. 

The joy faded from Scott's face, and Stiles wanted to kick himself. 

"You're not betraying anyone if you have fun, you know." Scott pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Or if you don't waste the rest of your life beating yourself up for shit that wasn't your fault." 

Anger and self-hate roiled slowly in the bottom of Stiles' stomach and rose up into his throat like bile. "Fuck you," he said, "and fuck everyone else who didn't even notice they were missing today. No point in spoiling our super awesome fun times by remembering the friends who didn't get to walk across that stage, right?"

"What the hell, Stiles?"

Ignoring Scott's outrage, Stiles gestured at the others, who'd moved on to joking about who'd been the worst suck-up in class. "I can't do that. Just kick back and pretend nothing happened."

"You really believe that?" Scott shook his head. "It's like you don't even know us anymore."

"I'm starting to think I never did." Turning his glare on the fire, Stiles tossed his almost full bottle at it. Beer splashed out, dousing a small portion of the flames with a loud hiss and drawing objections from some of his classmates. 

Scott grabbed his arm as he went to walk away. "No, you don't get to do that."

"Do what?" 

"Push me away like that. Best friends forever, remember." 

Scott raised his hand toward Stiles and crooked his pinky the way he had when they were little kids, racing through the park, chasing rainbows. Automatically, and because to do anything else to hurt Scott was beyond Stiles' ability, he curled his pinky around Scott's. 

Guilt knifed through Stiles' soul. Accepting Scott's easy forgiveness felt like a betrayal — of Allison and Aiden, of Deputy Sarah who was the first person to put a band-aid on Stiles' knee after his mom died, and of Dr. Giri, who had looked after his mom in those last days. Of all the people who'd died because he hadn't had the guts to put his life before theirs. 

Stiles pulled his hand back and pressed his fingers over his lips, holding in the words he wanted to say. About waking up a couple of days ago and it taking a heart-pounding, panic-filled second before his brain could translate the numbers on his phone into the correct time. About the dreams of blood and death, of watching through eye-holes as friends drowned in an onslaught of sword cuts.

About how the sound of a fly buzzing around a room could send him screaming into a corner.

He slipped his other hand into his pocket and resisted the urge to open his phone and check the list, to make sure that he hadn't forgotten a single name. Names were power, and he had to make sure that no one could ever take that from him, or anyone else, again. 

Eyes gleaming red in the darkness, Scott reached out and tugged Stiles' hand away from his mouth. "It wasn't your fault," he said, voice rumbling into a low and insistent alpha growl. 

Stiles just stared back at the stupid idiot. 

"I mean it, Stiles. Stop feeling so damn guilty all the time, and start..."

"Enough!" Derek interrupted whatever Scott was going to say. 

Scott bared his fangs and snarled at Derek.

"I don't think so." Derek moved to a defensive position that wasn't quite between Stiles and Scott, as if he thought Stiles were somehow in danger and Scott close to losing control, neither of which were anything close to the truth.

"It's all right," Stiles said, because he couldn't bear for it to be anything else.

"No, it's not." The red in Scott's eyes deepened. "You've got to stop taking the blame for things that weren't your fault. _You_ didn't kill anyone. _You_ didn't attack anyone. The Nogitsune did. And we made a choice to fight it. We knew it could kill us, and we went up against it anyway. Don't take that away from us, from Aiden and Allison and..."

Stiles bowed his head, letting Scott's words rain down on him like silver-tipped arrows. His fingers twitched, curling around an invisible sword and pressing against his stomach.

"Scott, you need to stop now and go back to the others," Derek said, his voice gentler than anything Stiles had ever heard from him. "And leave the fangs and fur here, okay?"

For a moment, Stiles thought that Scott was going to object, that Scott was going to rip into him all over again. Scott's jaw worked, firmed up, and Stiles braced himself. Then the anger and the werewolf just seemed to drain out of Scott. He pulled Stiles into a hug so tight that Stiles could feel his ribs creaking before taking off for the other side of the fire and flopping down next to Lydia.

"He means well," Stiles said to Derek's judgmental eyebrows.

"Yes, he does." Derek scrubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw, took a deep breath, and caught Stiles' wrist in his hand. "Just," he said and then shook his head. "I'm the last person to tell you not to feel guilty about having your body used as a weapon."

Stiles nodded, because there wasn't anything to say to that.

"Give yourself time, okay? Because when it comes down to it, Scott's right. It really wasn't your fault."

"I'm working on it," Stiles said, wincing at the cracked, croaking sound of his voice.

"I could... I understand what it's like. If you want to talk." Before Stiles could respond, Derek released Stiles' wrist and flexed his own hand.

"Thanks." 

They stood there silently for a moment, staring at each other, not moving until a yell from the others and a roar of the fire drew Derek's attention. 

"I've got to..." Derek gestured at the fire, then he caught Stiles' wrist again. "Don't stay away too long," he said, and then he let Stiles go and stalked away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: the lovely @eeyore9990

Stiles clicks off his phone, making the picture disappear. He brings up a hand to rub at his chest, as if that could ease the ache. He couldn't have kept on living with what he was doing to himself, to his dad and Scott and everyone else on top of what he'd already done. Leaving was so not the worst choice he could have made. But staying away... 

He's so tired — of thinking, of running, of hiding from his dreams. _Vengeance is not yours._

Pressing his knuckles into his sternum, Stiles breathes out. He hasn't had a panic attack in over a year, and he doesn't plan to start now. Not on a dark beach with no one to watch over him. When the ache goes away, he turns his phone back on and clicks over to his contacts. He doesn't have to be alone. He could text his dad. Or Scott? Or maybe Derek, because then he'd know for sure if they were in the same city. But he can't bring himself to be the one who reaches out, who makes the first move. It's not fair, it might be even more selfish than taking off without a word, but whatever.

Not wanting to think anymore, he pushes himself to his feet. He digs out his earbuds, slips one into his left ear, and leaves the other hanging. The tunes go on shuffle with the volume down low so he isn't deafened by the music. Counting Stars is the first song up, and if that's not a sign of something, Stiles has no idea what else it could be. 

He can't help singing along quietly, "I feel something so right, doing the wrong thing," as he sets off along the beach. His running shoes sink awkwardly into the sand with each step, but bare feet in the darkness is such a bad idea. Last time he tried that, he had to get his left heel stitched up and a tetanus shot because he didn't have his medical records with him. 

After a few minutes, Stiles stops just beyond the reach of the waves and stares out at the sky. The moon is playing peek-a-boo with the clouds, dancing in and out of them. _Not quite a quarter moon_ , Stiles thinks, and his brain helpfully tells him how many days until it's full. 

"Idiot. You're not a werewolf. What difference does the moon cycle make?" 

_Life and death,_ his brain helpfully suggests, along with an image from the bestiary of a water creature whose spikes are poisonous during certain phases of the moon. 

"Idiot," he repeats and stubs the toe of his shoe into the beach. Sand sprays out toward the waves, making a pattering noise. He repeats the move again and again, matching the slam of his shoe into the ground to the pounding beat of something electronic, reminding himself as he digs the hole deeper and deeper that he doesn't have to fight monsters if he doesn't want to. That it's somebody else's job right now and not something that he has to worry about.

Stuffing his hands in his pocket, one still curled around his phone, Stiles rocks back on his heels. A fierce sense of loss washes through him, not for people but for his Jeep. He can't afford to replace it. He doesn't have the money to get his ass back into the US by bus, train, or plane. And he can't stay here either. Canada's all sorts of welcoming, but there's no way he'll get a work permit.

"Fuck," he murmurs. Then louder, "Fuck!" And then throwing back his head, he howls, " _FUCK! Fuck you. Just fucking fuck you hard!_ "

His answer comes in Billy Idol yelling, "More, more, more," and a wave that crashes over his feet, and slaps up his legs, soaking him with freezing cold water all the way up to his knees. Goosebumps prickle over his skin, and a shudder goes through him. Reaching down, he scoops up a handful of sand, and flings it as far away as he can. Another surge slaps into his lower legs, swirling around him, drenching him before receding again. 

Stiles glares at the waves, and a tiny one laps at his toes, gentle as a kiss. "What the fuck," he says. "I'm wet already." 

He zips his phone into the pocket at the top of his backpack for safety, positioning it so he doesn't lose his earbuds. With a quiet whoop, he bounds into the water like a kid into a puddle. The song changes to Runnin', and he can't help but sing along with Adam Lambert and match his jumps to the drumbeat. "The higher, the lower, the _down, down, DOWN_." As he yells the last word, he lands so hard that a few drops of water hit him in the face.

That only encourages him to jump higher, trying to get the water higher and higher. Just like the cannonball competitions he and Scott used to have when they were kids, Stiles is totally awesome and makes the biggest splash. "Better than the waves," he crows, pumping his fist in the air. 

Splash after splash after splash, he laughs and dances and spins around, kicking up as much water as he can, and somehow managing not to topple over. Eventually, the music feeding into his ear changes to something downbeat, and as soon as he slows down, the wind comes in off the water. A gust curls around him and reminds him that he's wet and cold and needs to get his ass off the beach.

Snickering and shivering, teeth chattering, Stiles stumbles onto the sidewalk and heads for the closest bench. He takes off his backpack and rests it on the seat. To his relief, the waterproof material kept everything inside dry. 

There's no way Stiles can do anything about his shoes or jeans before he gets back to the hostel where he stashed his bags, but he can still hear his mom telling him he'll catch his death if he doesn't dry off. So he does the best he can, stripping off his t-shirt and bundling it into a plastic bag. Pulling out his hoodie almost sends the knife flying out of his backpack, but he catches it by the handle and slides it into a side pocket. The hem of his hoodie gets damp almost as soon as it touches his pants, but he adds a windproof jacket and starts to feel almost warm. He moves as quickly as he can. Not just because it's cold, but because he can feel someone watching him.

With his backpack hanging off one shoulder, Stiles spins around and almost bumps into a guy who's leaning against a nearby lamppost. He takes a step back, says, "Sorry," and starts to walk around him. 

A hand on Stiles' elbow forces him to stop. He yanks his arm away and turns to face the guy, mind automatically assessing weak points and creating a strategy to defeat him in a way Stiles couldn't have imagined before the Nogitsune. "I don't think so."

"I do." The guy folds his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge in a way that reminds Stiles of one of his dad's deputies. "And I've got enough bills in my wallet to drop you to your knees and prove it." 

"Nope," Stiles says, meaning _Don't make me do this_ as he's palming the knife and calculating the best trajectory and timing for giving the dude a bony knee in the nuts and slipping the knife between his ribs and into his heart. And Stiles is really fucking done with killing people, especially cops.

The guy tilts his head and smirks. "Why don't you try that again? And tell me how much you usually charge for—" He stops, and his eyes flick up to a point over Stiles' shoulder. He flexes his hands, and then, to Stiles' surprise, he backs away. 

"You know," the guy says. "You're not worth the hassle." 

Stiles manages to resist the urge to look behind him, because there's only one person he knows who'd freak out that guy, but he can't stop himself from muttering, "Would have been entrapment anyway, asshole."

"Don't walk my streets, and you won't have to worry about it," the guy snaps, and then he's gone.

Putting his knife back in the side pocket, Stiles takes a deep breath before saying, "You can come out now, Derek."

There's a moment when he thinks he's wrong, that the guy wasn't driven off by Derek's scowling eyebrows but then he hears some very soft footsteps and Derek is standing in front of him. 

Stiles remembers Derek being tall and broad — all muscle, scowling eyebrows, and facial scruff — and he's still all that. But looking at him now, Stiles thinks that he might be an inch or so taller than Derek and maybe, if he squints and tilts his head in just the right way, their shoulders are possibly the same width. 

None of that matters. Not when there's a barely visible flex of muscle in Derek's jaw, and Derek's eyes are the kind of dark and unreadable that means he thinks he might have done something wrong but he's not sure. Not when Stiles' heart is twisting in his chest, and anger is flaring deep inside him. _How can Derek think it's okay to creep his way back into Stiles' life?_

"You followed me," Stiles says flatly.

Derek's jaw tightens, and Stiles thinks he might actually be grinding his teeth together, which is some kind of satisfaction. "You left this," Derek grits out, as he attempts to slide a hand into the back pocket of his not-too-tight jeans. "The waiter thought it was a threat."

Stiles stares down at the partially melted silver arrowhead in the palm of Derek's hand. The metal is smoother than it was three years ago, but no less shiny. He takes it with a convulsive twitch of his fingers and clutches it tight enough for the edges to bite into his skin. He rubs his thumb over the rippled edge. "You followed me," he repeats, because that's not what he meant and Derek knows it.

When Derek doesn't respond, Stiles goes still in a way he could never have managed before the Nogitsune and just stares at him.

Running a hand over his face, Derek says, "It's not what you think."

"What is it then?"

"Cora..."

"Both of you? Seriously?"

"For fuck's sake, Stiles, it's not all about you."

 _Shit!_ It's utterly ridiculous how much Stiles has missed that snarly exasperation, and how it can banish his anger in a wash of fondness — not that he's going to let Derek so much as guess at that. "I'm waiting," he says.

The sound that comes out of Derek is as close to a growl as he ever gets in human form, and it takes everything Stiles has to press his lips together and stop them from curling up into a smile. 

"Cora's married," Derek finally says. "To the son of the Kitsilano pack's alpha. She lives here, asshole, and I came to visit her."

Stiles' heart twists again, and his hand tightens on the arrowhead. He hitches the backpack further up on his shoulder. "I should go."

He's three steps away when Derek says, "I missed you," but he keeps walking, because he doesn't trust himself not to do something stupid. 

"Breakfast," Derek calls after him. "10am. At the same place. I'll buy you coffee."

This time Stiles can't help smiling, but he doesn't respond stop or turn to look at Derek. He's moving fast enough that he barely hears Derek say, "See you there."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: @eeyore9990

The rain starts while Stiles is walking through the park, no shelter anywhere in sight. He speeds up, jogging toward the trees that seem further and further away. The rain increases. Large drops hit his skin, soft and sticky, red as rose petals, dark as blood, burning like acid.

A scream caught in his throat, Stiles stumbles and falls to his knees. He flails, trying to claw the rain off his arms, scratch the drops off his face. His skin peels away under his nails, curling off in long strips, the white and red of blood-stained bandages. 

High-pitched screeches of laughter drive his hands to his ears. Three women surround him. The fluttering of their wings drives poisoned air toward him, sharp as arrows.

"No," he chokes out. "Not me. I tried to stop him."

"He speaks his truth," hiss the snakes that wreath the women's heads. 

Stiles jerks his head up, stares at them. They're not strangers this time, uncaring and vengeful, but Allison, Erica, his mother.

"I'm sorry," he sobs. "I tried to stop him."

"Say it to those who care," Allison's snakes say.

"Say it to those who can listen," hisses Erica's snakes.

His mother bares sharp fangs with tips that glisten like poison. "Say it like it's your last chance."

☽ o ☾

Stiles wakes to a thud, a yell, and the guy who slept in the bed above him sitting on the floor. Mike or Mickey? No, last night the guy said Nicky. At least Stiles was pretty sure he had.

"Well, fuck," Nicky drawls. "That's one hell of a way to wake up." Then he's pushing to his feet and rubbing his ass. "Since there's no way I can pretend I meant to do that, I'm gonna go get me some coffee and Advil, and try to forget that ever happened."

Before Stiles can come up with a response, Nicky's limping out. The door slams shut behind him, and Stiles starts to shake. He curls up, pulling the covers up over his head, and bites his knuckles. The small pain doesn't help with the trembling, but it holds in the noises that are building inside him. 

He runs his tongue over the hand that's pressed against his mouth. Four fingers, one thumb. 

He taps his other hand against his thigh. Just four fingers. Only one thumb.

Counting and recounting, he whispers, "Four and one. Four and one," over and over like a mantra, as the tightness in his chest and his breathing begin to ease.

"This coffee is the shit, man," Nicky bangs back through the door, holding a large mug in both hands. "Y'all should get yourself some." He puts the mug on the tiny little table near the door and pulls a large backpack out of his locker. Slinging the backpack on his bunk, he comes to stand in front of the beds, looming over Stiles as he rummages through the bag.

Stiles is halfway to kicking the guy in the nuts before he remembers where he is and manages to turn the move into a clumsy attempt to get out of bed. He still bumps his shoulder against Nicky's thigh, but that's only fair. The dude's blocking Stiles in after all. 

"Sorry," Stiles mumbles. He opens his own locker and snags his bathroom kit and clean clothes out of his duffel. Last night's jeans and t-shirt are stuffed into the locker before he closes it and heads for the showers. He's all the way down the hall when he remembers that his phone is still plugged into the charger and turns around.

Stiles' locker is hanging open. His duffel is in the middle of the floor, and Nicky's digging through it. A glance at the top bunk shows Stiles' phone and old laptop stacked next to Nicky's backpack. 

Stiles hesitates. He thinks about letting Nicky do it, just walking away and letting him have whatever he wants. That would be it, the final nail in the coffin of his past life. No one would be able to find him or track him. He'd be free, able to go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, be whoever he wanted, and he wouldn't have to worry about hurting anyone he loved ever again. 

An almost inaudible grunt of satisfaction draws Stiles' attention back to Nicky. He's sitting back on his heels, clutching a broken Android tablet and the Batman USB stick that Erica gave Stiles in his left hand. The stick that contains the bestiary and other research that Stiles hasn't looked at since he left Beacon Hills. 

_Awww... shit,_ Stiles thinks, as he realizes that he can't let that go, that he needs to still feel like part of the fight no matter where he is. Slipping inside the room, he crouches down to put his stuff on the floor, and closes the door, quietly enough that Nicky would only notice if he was a werewolf. He doesn't though. Letting out a breath, Stiles jumps. Nicky twists around, brings up a knife, and slashes out. 

Instincts he learned from years of fighting with werewolves taking over, Stiles ducks and weaves. He seizes Nicky's wrist, digs his thumb into a pressure point, and Nicky's fingers go lax.

Seconds later, Nicky is on his back and Stiles is straddling him and holding the point of the knife at Nicky's throat. Stiles' hand doesn't so much as tremble. 

Nicky, on the other hand, is wide-eyed and shaking like a leaf. "I didn't..."

"Yeah, you did." 

"No, seriously, I was just—"

Stiles presses the knife a little harder, still not enough to break the skin, but Nicky gets it. He swallows hard, and Stiles can feel the ripple of his adam's apple. 

"Don't," Nicky says. "Please."

"Then tell me the truth."

"I need the money. Just for today. I would have gotten them back for you, I promise."

Stiles gives the knife a lazy twirl. "Who told you to take the bestiary?"

"I don't do no fucking beastiality."

"Bestiary," Stiles says.

"Whatever. I don't do that shit either. Heroin's bad enough."

"Her..." Stiles clears his throat. "Heroin? All this, for a drug habit?"

"What the fuck do you know about anything?" Nicky's face closes down, and he tries to buck Stiles off. "Asshole."

"Me? I'm not one stealing things."

"Fuck you."

"Not even in your dreams." 

"Just call security and get it over with, okay? Otherwise, I'm gonna scream and tell them you attacked me. They see us like this, who d'you think they're gonna believe?" 

"Oh please, there's been no maiming or mangling, and you're way bigger than me." Stiles rolls his eyes. Nicky's jaw settles into a mulish expression that reminds Stiles enough of Scott that he rolls off the guy. He flips the knife to change his grip and leans down to swat Nicky on the hip. "Go on. Get your ass out of here before I change my mind." 

When Nicky gets a hand on his duffel, Stiles adds, "And leave my stuff behind."

Nicky flinches but he does as he's told, hurling something at Stiles as he rushes off out of their room. Stiles fumbles the catch, and the ring bounces off his thigh and onto the floor between his legs. The gold glints in the light. Stiles stares at it for a moment before picking his mom's wedding ring up and clutching it to him. If he'd lost this...

Unable to finish the thought, Stiles scrambles to his feet. He lifts his duffel onto the bed and spends the next few minutes going through everything to make sure he hasn't lost anything else. It's all totally safe, though. He trails his fingers over them: his mom's ring, one of Scott's old asthma inhalers, Allison's arrowhead, the USB stick, the 2 and 4 that he unpicked from his lacrosse jersey, one of the trees Lydia sketched, his dad's first Sheriff's badge, an empty bullet that once contained wolfsbane. All the bits and pieces of a life that he's been carrying from place to place for years. 

Sweeping them into a small pile, Stiles rolls them up in a worn Beacon Hills t-shirt and shoves them into the bottom of his backpack along with his laptop and phone. Everything else goes into his duffel, and he leaves the room. 

For a second, he thinks about just keeping on going, walking as far as his feet will take him and taking a bus or train from there. But then he remembers how Derek said, _I missed you_ and goes to the bathroom instead. 

He's a complete and total idiot. He's not sure he wants to see Derek — _liar_ whispers a voice from the back of his mind — but he definitely doesn't want to be here any longer. Even if it's not the hostel's fault that Stiles didn't secure his locker properly before leaving the room. 

To Stiles' relief, the bathroom is empty. He checks the lock on the door three times before taking a quick shower. His hair is a bit long, definitely in need of a buzz, but Stiles decides to skip that in favor of finger-combing it into place. His clothes stick to his damp skin as he drags them on, but he makes up for that with an extra hoodie and his thickest pair of socks. 

On the way past the front desk, he hands over the linens and enough cash to pay for the late cancelation fee. Trying not to think too hard about the money he couldn't afford to waste, or how fucked up everything has been since he got to Vancouver, he settles his backpack over his shoulders, picks up his duffel, and walks out into the cool morning.

☽ o ☾

By the time Stiles makes it to the restaurant, he's ten minutes late and Derek's settled at what Stiles is pretty sure is the same table Stiles was at last night. A row of empty tables separates him from the heaters and everyone else sitting outside. Frowning at his phone, Derek reaches up to run a hand through his hair. He doesn't have any food, but the latte in his tall glass mug is already half gone.

He's waiting. It's a crazy idea, but no less true. Derek Hale is waiting for Stiles Stilinski. Like he cares. Like he's willing to listen. 

Caught between the urge to leave and the desire to walk up to Derek and ask him why, Stiles freezes into place. A couple of teenage boys bang into him as they walk past on either side, and one of them tells him to "stop blocking the fucking sidewalk." Stiles flips them off, but stays where he is until his phone vibrates in his pocket. He goes over to lean against the wall, resting his duffel on one end and using his knees to hold it safely in place.

_I'll always know your scent._

Laughter bubbles out of Stiles, and it takes him far too long to type something that's not full of mistakes, but finally he sends, _Srsly? That's your opening line?_

_Says the peeper from across the street._

_Lurker, dude. M not a peeper._

_Should I even bother telling you not to call me dude?_

_Waste of bits and bytes, dude._

Lips twisted into a smirk, Stiles glances over to see Derek giving his phone the eyebrow. Instead of waiting for a reply, Stiles texts, _How's the coffee?_

_Come on over and try it._

Stiles inhales, and the air feels sharp as a knife in his lungs. He starts coughing, almost dropping his phone before he manages to catch his breath again. 

A few seconds later, his phone vibrates again, with _You don't have to._ And then, before Stiles can respond, Derek sends, _Ordering breakfast. Come over if you want._

As Stiles watches, Derek puts his phone face down on the table and starts talking to a tall dark-haired waiter. He gestures at the menu, scowling briefly before nodding. After the waiter leaves, Derek runs a hand over the back of his neck and through his hair again. He taps his fingers on the table, staring down at his phone, before reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out an e-reader. 

_...like it's your last chance_ echoes in Stiles' mind, as he picks up his duffel and starts to walk.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: @eeyore9990

Stiles makes it two blocks before the realization that he's totally screwed has him stopping dead in his tracks. When the walk signal goes on, people stream around him as he frantically tries to remember how much money he has stashed away. Not enough for a night at a decent hotel, he's sure, or even in a middling motel unless he's willing to forego eating again. His stomach growls a complaint at that thought, and he almost whacks himself upside the head for not grabbing any of the hostel's free breakfast. Shitty as it was, it could have kept him going for at least a day.

"What the hell was I thinking?" Stiles mutters, and then, "Oh yeah, right, breakfast with the wolfman."

"You gonna cross the road or just keep standing there, blocking the ramp like an asshole?" 

Surprised, his hand tightening on the strap of his backpack, Stiles spins around. A woman in an electric wheelchair is glaring at him. He stutters out an apology and almost falls into the road, trying to get out of her way in a hurry. 

Giving him a nod and a tight smile, she says, "Whoever it is, if they put you off-balance like that, they're either worth everything or you need to run away as fast as you can." She rolls past him, close enough that Stiles takes another step back, right off the curb, to give her space. 

Her laugh is light and free as she tells him to, "Have a good day!"

"You too," Stiles calls after her. Then, seeing that the light is already turning yellow, he races across the road. 

His heart's beating a little faster than normal when he jumps over the curb to the sidewalk, and he can't help grinning, because he totally made it with at least a nano-second to spare. He moves out of the way of the pedestrians going the other way, and half-trips, half-collapses onto the pink bench at the bus stop. 

It's a shady enough spot that he relaxes into it. The bus must have just been by, because there's no one else waiting. Stiles sets his duffel on one end and tucks it between his legs, then pulls his backpack around to his front. He digs into it for his sunglasses, putting them on before he turns on his phone. Nothing from Derek.

A quick search shows that Amtrak is having a sale on train tickets, and he can get to Seattle for less than the money he has left. So Seattle and another hostel, and then he'll figure out what to do and where to go next. Stiles sighs. He just wants to curse Derek, fuck him up, because he was doing just fine before the asshole showed up and made him think about shit.

Not quite ready to make his way to the Skytrain and then to the train station, Stiles sits for a while. He watches people go by. Two women who looked to be in their sixties take up the other two seats on the bench, arguing over whether Loki would prefer Thor or Iron Man — Stiles blinks and then has to bite his lip to stop himself from joining in because, really, why would Loki bother choosing when he could have both of them. 

They leave when the bus arrives, and Stiles starts paying more attention to his surroundings. Two men are leaning against a nearby fence, kissing and hugging each other. Another pair of women, clearly a couple, walk past with their arms around each other, deep in an intense conversation. A family with kids passes by and the boy stops right in front of Stiles and says, "Can we go see the dinosaurs again, Daddy? Like tomorrow."

"Noooo... not again," a little girl whines. "It's my turn to choose."

"But you pick stupid things," the boy says.

And then they're gone, too far away for Stiles to pick out more than a few words that might be them from the rest of the noise. He sits back down with a thump and scrubs a hand through his hair. Suddenly, and for no reason he can imagine, he wants that. Kids and family and people bickering and laughing and just being with each other. Trusting someone else to get his back for a change.

He texts Derek, _Why did you go home?_

The answer comes in three separate lines. _Family_ then _Pack_ and finally, after a brief pause, _Because I was needed._

 _But what about_ , Stiles types and then accidentally hits Send instead of Delete.

After a few panic-filled seconds while Stiles is trying to figure out how not to make that sound creepy, his phone chimes and flashes with two incoming texts.

The first is from Derek, a somewhat cryptic, _It's easier to forgive others than yourself_ , that catches in Stiles' throat and makes him swallow hard.

The second is from an unknown number. _You're not the enemy any more than my brother was._

"Cora," Stiles murmurs, touching his phone right over the text, because it couldn't be anyone else. 

Stiles has an urge to respond to both with "So deep, dude," but he doesn't. For this once, he's not sure he wants to be a goof. He doesn't have a clue what to do or what he wants. 

No more nightmares, maybe? No more ancient Greek, snaky haired women chasing him through his dreams. But leaving didn't help with that. They're better... maybe. Or possibly just different now, because he's picked up some new material in his years on the road. He's not the only monster out there.

He swipes a hand over his face, kind of surprised to find that his skin is dry. He starts tapping his fingers against his thigh to the beat of the music coming from a nearby restaurant. An urge, a nearly overwhelming need, is building inside him, and it's left him feeling feather-light, almost dizzy. No matter how much he wants it to be, it's not from skipping breakfast, too many nights without enough sleep, or whatever.

Drawing in a deep breath and holding it, Stiles presses his feet against the ground and tries to focus in on the feeling, figure out—

His phone chimes with another text from the unknown number that he really needs to add to his contacts under Cora. 

_You're an idiot._

It startles a laugh out of him and an "Oh my god" before he replies with, _Takes 1 to know 1_.

Cora doesn't reply, and Stiles' attention is dragged away from his phone by someone yelling, "Hey, asshole, you can't park here. What if the bus comes?"

There's a black Camaro right in front of Stiles. And Derek's leaning over to push the passenger door open. "Get in," he says.

It's not even really an order, but Stiles finds himself scrambling to obey. His duffel catches between his feet, but somehow Stiles manages not to end up flat on his face. He even gets the stupid damn bag shoved into the back seat without damaging it or Derek's car. He barely even jostles Derek's coffee in the cup holder. Total win.

Derek pulls into traffic as Stiles is closing the door. "Seatbelt," he growls without looking at Stiles.

The silence is comfortable and familiar, tinged with just the right amount of tension for Stiles to be able to relax. Until Derek turns into a parking lot, finds a space facing the beach, and turns off the engine. He still hasn't looked at Stiles.

"Cora called me an idiot and told me to come get you." Derek's hands tighten on the steering wheel, and Stiles half-expects him to bang his own head against it. "And, before you ask, I've no idea how she knew where you were."

"She texted me to tell me the same."

"I didn't give her your number."

Stiles shrugs. "You could have. I would've forgiven you... eventually."

Derek cuffs him on the back of the head, and Stiles grabs his hand and laces their fingers together. Derek tightens his grip briefly and then stares down at their hands like he's confused before letting Stiles go.

"Oh." Stiles curls his fingers into a fist. "Yeah, I should—" He gestures at the beach.

"Lock your bag in the trunk first." Derek gets out of the car and grabs Stiles' duffel from the back seat. 

Shrugging his backpack onto one shoulder, Stiles starts toward the beach and leaves Derek to handle it. Words are piling up on his tongue, but he's got no clue how to say them. So he pauses to kick his sneakers off, shove his socks into them, and tie them to the strap of his backpack instead. He walks carefully, keeping an eye on the sand and stepping around anything that looks dubious. This time the sand is warm and dry, and it scratches at his skin as his feet sink into it. 

His soles are burning a little when he steps onto the damp, cooler sand near the water's edge. He listens to music, laughter, voices, and the waves, enough for him to wonder what he's missing, what else he'd hear if he were a werewolf. 

"Here."

Stiles fumbles the paper bag that Derek shoves at him but doesn't drop it. He tears it open and inhales sweet, sugary, yeasty, cinnamony air. How didn't he smell this in the car? The first mouthful of cinnamon bun is so good that it almost kills him. He makes an incoherent sound and flaps a hand at Derek as he takes a second, even bigger bite. 

"Thought you might be hungry." Derek sounds smug, but Stiles lets it go because this food is totally worth the sacrifice.

Halfway through chewing a third bite, Derek hands him the cup of coffee from the car. It's not really hot, but it's got just the right amount of milk and sugar. Stiles mumbles, "Oh my god, dude, you totally love me," and nods his head because he doesn't have an empty hand to flap. He is so not taking a chance on dropping either the cup or the bag and wasting any of the awesome deliciousness.

When he's finished the coffee and the bun, he crumples up the paper bag and stuffs it into the empty cup. The closest trash can is on the boardwalk, so he shoves them into the bottle pocket of his backpack. He goes to dust off his hands, but diverts his fingers to his mouth when he sees some icing on them. "So good," he says as he licks them clean. 

Derek watches him without saying a word. His gaze follows every movement of Stiles' tongue, so intently that Stiles is tempted to keep on doing what he's doing. Instead he gives his fingers one last suck and pulls them out of his mouth with a loud pop. Then he turns to face the water because it's easier than looking at Derek.

And when the silence between them gets to be too much, Stiles blurts out, "I still have nightmares."

After an incredibly long time, Derek says very quietly, "So do I."

"The Furies. They chase me, judge me, use their snakes and arrows on me. Sometimes they're women I know. Erica, Allison, Mom..."

"You didn't kill them."

"I..." Stiles squeezes his eyes shut briefly and clears his throat. "I can't not feel responsible, especially for Alli."

"I'm responsible—" Derek hesitates and seems to withdraw into himself. "You don't have to forgive yourself," he finally says, "but you have to let other people forgive you."

"How?" Stiles whispers.

"According to Cora, it's about listening when she talks," Derek says.

"I've been..." Stiles trails off, because he hasn't. He ran away so he didn't have to. He takes a deep breath that rasps against the lump in his throat. "I could."

"You can. You need to." 

Derek's hug is fierce, tight enough to come close to hurting. Stiles slides his hands around Derek's waist and presses even closer. 

"You have to," Derek says, his voice raw and cracked around the edges.

"Sorry," Stiles says. "So fucking sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So sorry." And because he doesn't know how to make this better, he keeps repeating the apology like a scratched vinyl record.

Derek doesn't tell him it's okay or that he's got nothing to be sorry about, or any of the other things that Scott and his mom and Stiles' dad have said to him. He just holds on to Stiles, in front of everyone, and presses a kiss to the top of Stiles' head. 

He doesn't let go when Stiles starts to cry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: the lovely @eeyore9990

Stiles holds on to Derek's hand as they walk back to the car. He's a fucking cried-out mess. His nose is stuffed up, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he's sure his way-too-pale skin is red and blotchy. He doesn't feel weird about it until Derek reaches up with his free hand and plucks at the damp patch near the shoulder of his t-shirt. 

_Ewwwww_ , Stiles thinks. Then the realization slams into him that he did that. Even stranger, that Derek let him snot up his t-shirt without protest. 

The idea settles into Stiles, light as a feather. He can feel the nightmares lurking at the back of his mind. His ears still echo with the barely audible hiss of snakes, the heavy thunk of an arrow into not-flesh, and the drip-drip-drip of blood. But he can also hear the crash of waves, the laughter of children, and the everyday, just-like-home, sounds of people and cars. There's also the undeniable knowledge that Derek exposed his emotions to the world for him. 

Stiles sniffs, rubbing at his prickly eyes, and he walks into Derek's side.

Instead apologizing for stopping without warning, Derek jingles a set of keys at him and then clicks the button that sets off a beep and unlocks the trunk. Without warning, Derek grabs the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it up over his head. A wolf-whistle pierces the air, and someone else claps.

Unable to help himself, Stiles stares at Derek's shoulder. Neither the wound from the Oni nor the Nogitsune's fly have left a visible scar. He raises his hand and touches the soft, smooth skin. There's nothing left of the damage he wrought. 

"Werewolves," he huffs.

Turning, Derek catches Stiles' hand before he can drop it back down and stuff it in his pocket. "Here." Derek presses Stiles' fingertips against his sternum, fitting them against the five claws tattooed there — exactly opposite the triskelion on his back. "Memories," Derek says, "are always with you."

"Your mother's?"

Derek nods. Then, releasing Stiles, he opens his suitcase, pulls out a dark grey t-shirt, and puts it on. 

Flicking a glance at the trunk, Stiles sees a leather backpack sitting on top of a case of water, nestled between the suitcase and his own duffel. "You're going home." He sounds surprised, even to himself.

"Do you want..." Derek hesitates, giving the duffel an indecipherable look before saying, "I can drop you off at your car."

"You're going home," Stiles repeats slowly, testing each word. They're warm, no longer wrapped in terror, white bandages, and dark red dreams. His heart trips a beat, stealing his breath for a moment. He tries to cover for it by untying his shoes from his backpack. His feet are covered in sand. The quick dusting he gives them only gets most of it, but he shoves his bare feet into them anyway. He's left holding onto his balled-up socks.

"Stiles?"

Fine tremors shaking his spine, Stiles summons up a smile for Derek. "Give me a ride?"

"To the Jeep?"

Biting his lower lip, Stiles shakes his head. "My baby's dead. Gone. Done for. Banished to whichever heaven or hell the Vancouver police sends inoperable and abandoned cars."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too." Stiles blinks away the blurriness in his vision. "Across the border," he says as fast as he can, not giving himself time to change his mind before the words are out. "I think I wanna go home."

Derek's hug is as fierce as his voice. He presses his face against Stiles' neck. "If you change your mind..."

"I'll let you know," Stiles says, and because he can't help himself, he turns his head and buries his nose in Derek's hair. Then he pulls away before he does something stupid, like kiss the tip of Derek's ear. Leaning into the trunk, he pushes his socks into the duffel. 

"Whenever you're ready," Stiles says, and then moves around to get into the car. 

He's got his seatbelt on by the time Derek opens the driver's side door and hands him a couple of bottles of warm water. They pull out of the parking lot in silence and head for the road. Everything looks strange through the window. Stiles doesn't recognize any of the landmarks he'd settled on when he drove up to Vancouver. Maybe the airport, he thinks, but somehow that looks different too. 

When buildings become fields, Stiles reaches down into his backpack and retrieves his passport. He runs his thumb up and down the edge. His breathing sharpens as the car slows down to join the short line of cars and vans heading toward the border. He shifts in his seat, taps his foot against the mat, and flicks the pages, over and over.

"You need to calm down." Keeping his left hand on the wheel, Derek rests his right on Stiles' leg. "The last thing we need is to draw attention at the border."

"I'm a cop's kid," Stiles says. "It's like being a professional at that stuff, you know." 

"We were visiting my sister in Kitsilano. She just had a baby, a little boy." The wistfulness in Derek's voice is a tangible thing in the quiet of the car. "You met me there, because you've been living in..." 

"Chicago," Stiles supplies. "I was in Chicago before I drove here."

Derek wrinkles his nose. 

"Yeah, totally not my favorite place to live either." Stiles swallows the rest of his rant about wind and snow and ice as Derek pulls up to the booth, snags Stiles' passport, and rolls down his window. 

The guy in the booth takes a moment to run their passports through his computer before looking into the car. There's a moment when something seems to pass between the guy and Derek, then he asks, "Stilinski, can you pronounce your first name?"

Stiles offers him the combination of many consonants and a couple of vowels that is his hellish real name, and the guy nods.

"Welcome home," he says, as he hands their passports back to Derek, who gives them to Stiles. 

Feeling as if he's about to burst with the effort of not saying anything, Stiles manages to wait until they've passed the first exit on I-5 before blurting out, "Dude. What the hell was that? That thing back there? That wasn't a border crossing, that was a Sunday afternoon drive through the park."

"He's related to Cora's pack."

"Oh my god." Stiles flails a hand and almost flings their passports at Derek. "You could have told me. Seriously. All that worrying and you knew. God, you are such an asshole sometimes." 

Derek gives him the _you're not that stupid_ eyebrow and flicks on the stereo. Johnny Cash growls out, "Your own, personal, Jesus," and Stiles jumps in his seat. 

"No," he says. "You're not allowed to do that either."

"What?" 

"Start The Man Comes Around in the middle. I mean, this is a total classic." Stiles reaches out and pokes at the buttons on the stereo. The CD cuts out and a crackly, over-loud ad for car insurance fills in the silence. 

"Don't." Derek bats away Stiles' hand. A second later, Johnny's singing again, from the beginning as he should. Halfway through the song, Derek says, "It wasn't in the middle when I started listening to it."

"So not the point." 

Derek makes a non-committal grunt and snags a bottle of water. He twists off the cap one-handed and takes a long drink. Smirking at the world outside, because this totally means he's right, Stiles zips their passports into the front pocket of his backpack and digs out his phone. After a quick check to make sure he has no messages, he settles back into his seat and watches the world go by.

☽ o ☾

After a couple of hours or so, Derek clears his throat.

Stiles catches that strange expression on his face again, as if Derek's not quite constipated. "What?"

"Seattle."

They've just passed a mileage sign with distances to the next rest stop, Everett, and Seattle on it, but Stiles wasn't paying enough attention to remember how far they were. "Okay," he says, stretching out the vowels and turning it into an almost-question. 

His eyebrows drawing together, Derek scowls at the road.

"You need to give me more than that, dude."

"If you want..." Derek's scowl deepens. 

It takes him a few seconds but Stiles finally figures out what Derek means. "If I want you to drop me off in Seattle?"

Derek nods, sharp and vicious, like it hurts him to do it.

Stiles stares down at his phone, at the way his fingers are tracing the edges of the darkened screen. He'd follow his instincts, but they're scattered all over the place, screaming at him to run and to stay and to simply vanish so he doesn't have to deal. The muscles in his shoulders tense, his fingertips go white as they press against the corners of his phone, and his shoulders rise up to meet his ears.

Before he can change his mind, he squeaks out a "Keep going" that brings a curl to the corner of Derek's mouth. Stiles is totally counting it as a smile.

He breathes out a sigh and oh-so-casually slides a hand over to Derek's leg. It's not holding on if he's just resting it there, right? Not even if Derek places his own hand over Stiles' and laces their fingers together.

☽ o ☾

About three hours after that, their hands aren't linked anymore. Nightmare and the Cat is playing on the stereo, and Stiles has completely lost his ability to keep quiet. He's sitting sideways in his seat, telling Derek a long, mostly fake story about getting caught in a blizzard somewhere in the middle of Bumfuck, Vermont, when Derek frowns at the gas gauge.

Stiles cranes his neck and sees that it's just slipped below an eighth of a tank. "You want me to watch out for the next gas station?" 

"Yeah," Derek say. "This gets better gas mileage than the Toyota, but we still can't go much further without stopping."

"What happened to that thing, anyway?" Stiles winces when Derek's eyebrows draw down, creating a deep line between them, and a flash of blue goes through Derek's eyes. "Hey, hey, it's okay. You don't have to tell..."

"I didn't need it any longer," Derek says, interrupting him. "Cora had this car, a husband, and a new baby and I didn't have," he pauses briefly before continuing with, "I drove it up to Vancouver and traded with her."

Stiles can hear the pain that threads through the words that Derek doesn't speak, the reasons why he bought the bigger vehicle, the pack that no longer exists. It twines around the grief inside Stiles, tighter and tighter, and drives him to touch Derek again. He runs his hand over Derek's thigh, needing to reassure both of them. 

Derek just grips the steering wheel tighter and lapses back into silence.

After a few seconds, when Stiles can't stand it any longer, he leers at Derek and waggles his eyebrows in the exaggeratedly suggestive manner that's usually guaranteed to make Derek groan. "Good choice, dude. The Camaro's got way too much cool factor to be a mama wolf car."

"I dare you to say that to Cora's face." 

A thrill of alarm chases a flashing image of Cora's claws and fangs down Stiles' spine. "No way. Totally not going to happen. Nope." Stiles shakes his head wildly. "Nope. Seriously. All the nopes because I'm too damn smart for that."

The corner of Derek's mouth curves again. Stiles grins at him and mutters, "Go me."

"Gas station," Derek says, changing lanes abruptly enough to make the woman behind them step on her brakes and hit the horn long and loud enough to make Derek wince. Stiles flips the asshole off as she speeds past. 

Derek pulls up to a pump and gets out. While he's working on filling the car, Stiles flicks on his phone. The screen flashes a low battery warning and notifications of texts from Scott and his dad. Closing his eyes, so he can't read the words beneath the warning, he clicks it off again. 

_They know_.

"Oh my god." Stiles swallows and tries to focus on his breathing. "In and out", he tells himself, like his once upon a time therapist told him to do. He even clicks his phone off and on in the same rhythm, hoping that helps. It doesn't. His chest is too tight, his throat too choked up for even a molecule of air to get past. Spots start to gather at the edges of his field of vision. 

Someone knocks on the window right next to Stiles. Adrenaline shoots through the block in his chest, and he draws in a long, painful, shuddering breath. Slowly, he turns his head and opens his eyes. 

Derek makes a _wind it down_ gesture, and Stiles presses the button to lower the car window. Nothing happens because the car's turned off. Rolling his eyes, Stiles opens the car door into Derek. 

Rubbing his arm, which won't bear the kind of bruise it should because werewolves suck, Derek asks, "You want to go and get us some food?" 

He's pointing at an Arby's a couple of buildings over, and Stiles' stomach growls. It's been way too long since he fed it. He almost gets out, manages to put one foot on the ground, before air catches painfully in his chest again. "I can wait. Patient guy here. Seriously," he says. "Just, you know, don't forget the curly fries." 

Not only doesn't Derek forget, he brings back four large orders of curly fries and only takes one.

"You are totally the best, most awesomest dude to ever dude," Stiles says, around his first mouthful of heaven, "and don't let anyone ever tell you different."

Derek grunts at him and slots The Cure's Bestival Live 2011 into the stereo.

"Totally the best," Stiles mutters, and because he can't think of a better way to say thank you, he passes Derek his burger and his one carton of curly fries. 

They eat while driving, and Derek doesn't complain when Stiles steals the last of his curly fries. Stiles can't help but think, and only just manages not to say out loud, _If that isn't love..._ because even his dad is too selfish for that.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Oregon, as the sky starts getting dark, they run into traffic. It's the most ridiculous thing. Both lanes are crawling at best, stop and go at the worst, and it takes them almost two hours to reach the construction that takes the highway down to one lane, and then another hour to reach the RV that's toppled over on its side. The family are okay, most of them sitting on the side of the road, while the guy who's clearly the father paces and gesticulates wildly at a pair of cops and a tow truck driver.

Stiles wants to yell at him. It's late. Every flash of light from the other cars and trucks expose the lines of tension and exhaustion that mark Derek's eyes and jaw. "We should stop," he says, when Derek growls as two trucks take up both lanes, not really passing each other, forcing him to slow down. 

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. You're tired and the driving sucks and that makes no sense because there's even less reason for bad traffic around here than back home. Speaking of which, we're not going to get to Beacon Hills before tomorrow and that's way too many hours behind the wheel, even for a werewolf."

"I said I'm fine."

"Fine," Stiles huffs. "Be that way." He slides down in his seat, crosses his arms over his chest, and turns to stare out the window. 

It's too dark to see anything much except the other vehicles on the road, shadows from trees and bushes, and occasionally a lit up building on the side of the road. _Home_ , the vibrations of the tires against the road seem to say. Names flick through his mind with each light that flashes past. Alive, dead, alive, dead, until he closes his eyes because he can't take anymore. 

It's better like that, dark, relaxing, quiet. 

Until...

Sharp as arrows, the lights stab through his eyelids in a _splat drip splat_ of bright red. 

"No," Stiles says. Because he won't. He won't. It's been so long, too long. It's been enough. He can say, "No!"

"Stiles, come on. Wake up." Derek squeezes Stiles' thigh a little too hard. His not-quite-claws, not-quite-nails dig through the denim of Stiles' jeans. 

"Ow!" Stiles bats at Derek's hand and sits up, trying to get away from him. "I'm awake, okay? See?" He turns to Derek and bats his eyelashes at him. "Wide awake. No need to hurt the human."

"We're stopping," Derek says. He gentles his grip on Stiles' leg but doesn't stop holding on. "Sign for the next exit says there are a few motels there."

Rubbing at his eyes, Stiles barely manages to cover his yawn with a hand. "Giving up? Finally admitting I was right?"

"Of course."

Stiles puts his hand over top of Derek's, and this time it's Derek who holds on. He doesn't let go until they pull into the motel parking lot.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: @eeyore9990

The motel room is overpriced, small, and has only one bed. It's also the last one available, if all the No Vacancy signs are telling the truth. Stiles plugs his phone in, paces and twitches, while he waits for Derek to be done with the bathroom. By the time Stiles has washed and changed into sleep pants and a t-shirt that's seen way better days, Derek is sitting up in bed, leaning back against his pillows, e-reader in hand. He looks far more relaxed than Stiles feels. 

"I could..." Stiles waves at the floor, outlining a bed-like kinda shape in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. "You know, if you want. Since you're paying for the room and..." He trails off when Derek raises an eyebrow at him. "Or not?"

"Stiles," Derek puts his e-reader on the nightstand. "Get in bed."

"Or not, it is." His heart tripping a double beat, Stiles dumps his clothes and other shit on top of his duffel bag. His awkward hop-jump over it sends him stumbling and half-falling into the bed.

Rolling his eyes, Derek clicks off the light and slides down under the cheap sheets. The room doesn't get dark. The curtains are too thin to keep out the lights from the parking lot. Neon flickers into the room almost as rapidly as Stiles' mind is looping around the same track over and over. 

Because he could be fucking things up even worse by going home. What if his dad is seriously pissed off at him? Stiles can't exactly blame him. He took off without a heads-up. He abandoned his dad, broke all the promises they made to each other when his dad quit drinking, about always being there for each other, about never ever...

"Stiles, shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

An almost-growl comes from Derek, who gets up out of bed, stalks over to the window, and fiddles with the curtains. He manages to block a fraction more of the annoying red and blue neon before giving up and heading back to bed. Derek isn't naked, Stiles knows he isn't, and yet, in the backlit dimness of the room...

_Damn it_. 

Twitching, trying to think of anything but the way the neon all but caressed the planes and curves of Derek's body, Stiles rolls from his back to his side, facing away from the window, from Derek — right into the light reflecting off the bathroom mirror. He huffs, punches his flatter than flat pillow into something a bit more like a stiff lump, and settles onto his back. That lasts about five seconds, because who's he kidding? He's never in his life been able to fall asleep that way. He turns over again, curling up behind Derek, hauling the covers up as far as he can without covering his mouth or nose, hiding from the light.

His knees brush the back of Derek's thighs. The hair on Derek's legs tickles Stiles' skin. The warmth that Derek gives off makes Stiles want to press closer, but he doesn't. He tries to keep still, wanting to let Derek sleep. He forces his mind to focus on each breath, in and out, instead of tracing the outlines of Derek's body, filling in the shadows.

_Don't think about him. Don't. Don't. Don't._ Because Derek might be interested, but what if Stiles has been reading him wrong, what if he was just relieved to see that Stiles was okay because... reasons? 

Stiles pulls away from Derek. He tries to keep still, wanting to let Derek sleep. He forces his mind to focus on each breath, in and out, away from all the things that his brain wants to do with Derek, away from reminding him of all the things he's done that his dad wouldn't approve of, the things he wants to do with Derek.

"Stiles."

That was definitely a growl, a very exasperated one. 

"Sorry for breathing, which, you know, is something even werewolves need to do."

_Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale._

It doesn't work. Not when his dad is waiting for him, when he and Scott and Lydia and Danny and Malia and Chris... 

Stiles swallows. _They love me_ , he tells himself. _They'll forgive me_.

"They've already forgiven you," Derek mutters. "We all forgave you years ago."

"But what about... you don't know what I've done."

"I've got a pretty good idea. I've been on my own too."

Stiles' brain slides sideways, filling with images of Derek standing on a street corner, of cars slowing down, picking him up, of men pushing him into an alley.

"Survival is the best revenge," Derek says. His fingers are warm around Stiles' hand. When he tugs, Stiles doesn't resist. He lets Derek pull him onto his side, wrap Stiles' arm around his waist. With Derek's almost gentle encouragement, he fits himself behind Derek. Stiles is the big spoon, and yet he feels surrounded by Derek's body, protected. 

"That's good, I guess," Stiles says, trying to sound more light-hearted and amused than he feels, "because I'm the only person I've got to take anything out on." 

Derek's grip on Stiles' hand tightens to almost painful. "Don't. It just makes things worse."

The soul-deep ache threaded through Derek's words catches at Stiles. He scoots closer until there's no space between them, turns his hand so he can lace their fingers together, and hugs Derek one-armed. "I know," he says. "I was just being," he pauses and then admits, "I don't even know what I was being."

Derek doesn't respond, but there's a feeling of settling in, of comfort and trust that has Stiles burying his nose into the curls at the nape of Derek's neck. He breathes in Derek, softly, slowly, feels Derek's muscles relax as he falls asleep. Stiles doesn't, not really. He drifts in and out of consciousness, slipping from memories into dreams into wakefulness and back again. 

The sun is shining through the window, dust motes dancing in the beams, when Stiles wakes up from a dream that's left him tasting blood. He sweeps his tongue over his lower lip, feeling the spot where it's broken, cracked, and bleeding. He'd bitten it in his dream as the arrows had flown around him, thudding into targets, missing him by so little that it felt intentional. 

A yawn catches Stiles by surprise, opening his mouth wide enough to break his lip open a little more. He stretches and reaches down to scratch at the trail of hair leading down from his belly button. Derek snuffles in his sleep and pushes his face into his pillow, wrapping his arms around his torso, clearly annoyed at Stiles for moving, but he doesn't open his eyes. 

It's too damn early for anything, according to the clock on the nightstand, but Stiles gets up anyway. Ragged bits and pieces of the dream haunt him as he takes care of business. A hot shower washes away most of the remnants and wakes him up enough to know that he needs breakfast and coffee, and not necessarily in that order. 

He picks his way around the dim room, trying to be quiet enough not to wake Derek. _Let sleeping werewolves lie,_ his trivia trash for brain unhelpfully provides, almost making him laugh. He gives up trying to dig his wallet out of his backpack and just grabs the whole thing, along with the room key off the desk and his phone. He doesn't have a lot of money left, but he can manage a cheap diner breakfast.

Outside is bright enough to make him stop and blink. He scrubs a hand over his watering eyes, shading them from the sun as he orients himself. The Dennys that he remembers from the night before is off to his left, on the other side of the office.

He only gets a few steps before a guy sitting outside a room a few doors down, smoking a cigarette, asks, "You want a ride, kid?"

Stiles barely cuts him a glance, just shakes his head and ignores the offer of "I'll take you anywhere you want to go." Keeping his head down and his eyes on the ground, Stiles cuts across the parking lot to avoid the guy. He so doesn't want to deal.

Dennys is busy, but Stiles manages to snag a seat at the counter and a cup of coffee while he waits for their slams to be ready. He tucks his backpack between his feet to keep it safe and flicks on his phone. He clicks into a random game app as fast as he can, managing not to see more than the _Dude, talk to me_ that was Scott's last text. 

He bounces one leg as he starts level 148 of Candy Crush again. This time through, the game is whipping his ass even harder than it did the first few times. He's just managed to avoid a bomb and get the right striped/wrapped combo when his phone buzzes and an incoming text flashes across the top. Panic jolts through him and he slaps his phone face down on the counter.

He's not ready for them. They need to wait until he gets home, stop bugging him already, because he can't talk about this, can't face them until he has to. He needs the time, just a few more damn hours, to get his shit together, to be with Derek. 

"Here you go, honey." The waitress drops a plastic bag in front of him. "Extra ketchup, just like you asked." A cardboard carrier with four large coffees is set down next to it. "You drive safely now," she says.

"Thanks." Stiles spares her something he hopes passes for a smile and drops a few bills onto the check, enough to cover it and give her a generous tip. "Okay if I pay here?" He cocks his head at the long line of people waiting to pay.

"Sure thing. Just don't forget your phone."

Stiles reaches back to grab it, slipping it into his pocket without looking. He slings his backpack over one shoulder, takes the plastic bag in his left hand. He balances the coffees carefully in his right, managing not to spill a drop all the way across the parking lot. He's celebrating that fact when he gets to their motel room and realizes that he has no idea how he's going to get the keycard out, never mind open the door, without dropping something. 

"Shit shit shit," Stiles mutters, because there's nothing to put anything down on except the ground and he really doesn't want to do that to his breakfast. "Derek, damn it."

The door is yanked open hard enough to make it bang against the wall. Derek's standing in front of Stiles, wearing the boxers and tank top he slept in and a serious case of bed head, clutching Stiles' duffel bag in one hand.

"Heeeeeeeey," Stiles offers, dragging out the vowel to give himself time to figure out what's going on with Derek.

"You came back."

Stiles lifts up the bag and the coffees. "With caffeine and bacon. Breakfast of the gods."

Derek takes a step back, leaving just enough space for Stiles to edge into the room. It's dark enough inside when Derek closes the door that Stiles stands still and blinks, trying to will his eyes to adjust. With his luck, he'd fall flat on his face if he took another step, 

A muffled thud comes from behind him. His duffel hitting the floor, he assumes, and then Derek is taking the bag of breakfast and the coffees from him, slipping his backpack off his shoulder, and wrapping his arms around Stiles, pulling him close. 

"Hey," Stiles repeats, softer this time, as he returns Derek's hug. "I wasn't leaving."

"You didn't answer your phone," Derek says into the curve of Stiles' neck and shoulder. "And you didn't say no to that guy who offered you a ride."

Stiles pulls away, because he needs to see Derek's face, needs to know that he's not misunderstanding. Derek resists for a second, tries to hold on, but eventually he raises his head when Stiles puts a finger under his chin. Derek's eyes are a little bloodshot and there's a ring of beta blue around the pupil. 

Before he can even think about it, never mind overthink, Stiles leans forward and kisses Derek. After a moment of hesitation, and a muffled groan, Derek kisses him back. He licks into Stiles' mouth, and Stiles opens up to him. It's perfectly imperfect, with too many teeth and Stiles' cracked lip, and it sends a shiver down Stiles' spine that all but curls his toes. 

Afterward, when they're standing there, foreheads touching, arms around each other, Derek says, "I was going to wait. I didn't want to take advantage."

"I'm glad, and you didn't." 

Derek scowls at him in confusion. "That doesn't make sense."

"Does too. I'm glad you didn't wait, and you didn't take advantage of me." Stiles brushes a kiss over Derek's lips. "I'm not sure anyone will ever be able to take advantage of me again. Not this way, at least."

An almost sad look on his face, Derek cups Stiles' cheek with one hand and combs his fingers through Stiles' hair. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about." Stiles takes a deep breath and gives him a shaky smile. "Unless you don't plan on kissing me ever again, in which case I'll make you very, very sorry."

Derek's answer is to kiss him again. Stiles' stomach grumbles loudly in the middle of it, breaking them apart because they're grinning too hard. 

"I hear we have bacon," Derek says. 

Stiles sticks out his tongue. "Asshole. I know you've been smelling our awesome breakfast this whole time. We've got all the best food groups: bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee."

"And ketchup. Lots and lots of ketchup." Wrinkling his nose, Derek holds up two handfuls of white plastic.

"Don't knock the tasty sauce." Stiles snags a few of the packets. 

They eat on the bed, sitting next to each other. Stiles rattles on about everything and anything that comes to his mind, avoiding anything to do with where they are and where they're going. Derek doesn't say much at all, occasionally giving Stiles the kind of bemused look that makes Stiles want to kiss him all over again. He doesn't though. 

Eventually the food's gone, and there's nothing left to do except head for the car. Stiles starts trembling deep inside, almost wishing that he'd skipped breakfast, as they pull onto the highway. 

_This is it_ , he thinks, and he reaches for Derek's hand. "Distract me," he says, and it comes out more of a plea than he intended.

"It'll be fine," Derek says, but he flicks on the stereo, filling the car with sound, before taking Stiles' hand.

"Yeah." Stiles holds on, tight enough for the rough edges of his fingernails to bite into Derek's skin, as the car speeds up and they merge onto the highway.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: @eeyore9990

Between leaving the hotel and when they turn off I-5, Stiles changes his mind over and over. His leg bounces. Sometimes he clings to Derek's hand, but the rest of the time he wrings his hands, taps his fingers on anything and everything to keep the beat, or chews what little is left of his nails and the already ravaged skin around them. He swings between talking non-stop, not giving Derek a chance to respond and staring out the window without saying a word. 

Derek only complains when Stiles flicks through the radio stations and ends up on a commercial or some kind of pop or country station. He actually growls and slaps the stereo off when Stiles gets distracted by the sirens and flashing lights of a Sheriff's car racing past and pauses on a religious station. Stiles sticks to CDs after that, constantly changing them, not always waiting for one to finish before popping in the next one.

He almost tells Derek to take him to Sacramento or San Francisco or anywhere but home a hundred times. But, for the first time in years, that's more terrifying than going home and picking up the threads of the life that he abandoned. He can't. He just can't. He'd rather face a thousand crazy monsters than walk out onto the dark sides of the streets.

About thirty miles from Beacon Hills, Stiles is bouncing to "Blinded by Science" when Derek turns down the volume and says, "Phone."

"Huh?" Stiles blinks at him. 

"Your phone has been buzzing for the last few minutes. Answer it or kill it, I don't care."

"No," Stiles says, because he doesn't want to do either of those things. The last thing he wants to do is talk to his dad or to Scott right now but cutting them off is unimaginable.

"Stiles," Derek is gritting out the words like they're hurting him. "Make it stop or I will pull over and break it."

"Okay, okay. Shutting it up now." Stiles holds his hands toward Derek, palms outward, in a placating gesture, before scrambling around to reach into the backseat and dig his phone out of his backpack. He only half-strangles himself, and that's a total win. 

He's shaking by the time he gets settled facing forward again, phone in hand. Fanged butterflies are attacking his insides. He so doesn't want to deal that he almost turns off his phone, but he knows that his dad is snugged up with his GPS, watching the Stiles dot creep closer and closer, and even Stiles isn't that cruel. He ignores the text notifications and mutes his phone so completely that he turns off the vibrate.

"Done," Stiles says, tossing his phone over his shoulder, wincing as soon as he realizes what he's done, then relaxing when he hears the soft thud of it landing on the seat. 

Derek nods before speeding up to pass yet another pickup truck driving just below the speed limit. 

The music stops as the car flashes past the sixteen mile marker to Beacon Hills. The numbers lodge into Stiles' chest like an arrow, and he almost chokes on them when the music stops and the only noise in the car comes from outside. After a few seconds, when it's clear that Derek's too focused on the traffic to care, Stiles twists around in his seat and starts rummaging in the glove box for something they haven't heard yet.

He comes up with Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and the arrow drives in a little deeper. The cold desolation of the cover is almost too much, so he flips it over. "Song of Joy" is the first listing he sees, and something fragile and sharp cracks open inside him. Words he's never been able to speak aloud swirl through him, choking him, raking his throat raw as they force their way out.

"I felt it," he blurts out. 

"What?"

"I wasn't just pushed into a corner of my mind while the Nogitsune possessed me. I was there for everything, seeing everything, feeling everything. I know how it feels to kill someone, to have their blood spill, hot and wet, over my hand. The Nogitsune? It didn't just enjoy killing; it fed from it, reveled in it, and it shared all of that with me."

Derek doesn't say anything, just reaches for Stiles' free hand. 

"I don't know if it was this body that did all that, or if this is even my body, the one I was born in." Stiles' fingers convulse on the cover, sending a spiderweb of cracks over it. "But it doesn't matter, because I know how powerful murder can make me, how it feeds my spark, how easily flesh parts, and how fucking awesome a scream can feel on my ears."

"Days when I was too tired to fight, it was like the Nogitsune was feeding me too. And I was so hungry. For sleep, for fear, for violence and blood and that indescribable feeling of someone's life literally disintegrating in my hands." 

"You didn't—"

"Yeah, I did." Stiles scrubs at the tears burning down his cheeks. "God, I hated Scott that day. My hands shoved a sword into his guts, and he still trusted me. I was torturing him, and he still fucking trusted me. You have no idea how much that hurt the Nogitsune, how much it hurt me."

Derek's thumb rubs over the back of Stiles' hand. The painfully soft caress breaks Stiles open even further. Words spill out of him like water from a broken pipe. He can't control them, doesn't even really try, until the car slows down, pulling off the road and into one of the sheltered spots where some of the high school kids, the lucky ones Stiles always thought, used to come and make out. 

When the car finally stops, Stiles pulls his hand away from Derek's and turns to face him. "And you," he says. "The things I said to you, the things I promised to do to you." His chest squeezes tight, and he shakes his head. "The things I _wanted_ to do to you."

He reaches back and opens the door, half-falls out of the car backward. Derek is there before he can get away, hauling him upright and into a hug.

"I know," Derek says. "We all know."

"No, you don't. You can't." Stiles pushes away, although he doesn't move more than a couple of steps.

"I held Paige when she died. My eyes didn't turn blue because I killed her, but because I was relieved when she died. Relieved that she wouldn't hate me, that no one would know how badly I'd fucked up." Derek presses his cheek against the side of Stiles' head, shaking so much that Stiles can't do anything but hold on to him. "Even Scott knows how it feels to have someone you love turn on you, shoot arrows into you, try to kill you, and then have to hold her while she dies." 

"It's not the same," Stiles insists. Because it isn't. It can't be. 

"I loved Kate, cared for Jennifer. Part of me still does, despite what they did to me and my pack," Derek says. "I buried my sister. I killed my favorite uncle. Hell, I helped you to burn him alive, _for the second time_." 

The self-loathing in those last few words drives Stiles to touch Derek, to cup his cheek and try to ease his pain. "He was insane. You didn't have a choice."

Bowing his head, Derek pulls away and averts his eyes so Stiles can't begin to guess what he's thinking. "I had a choice. It wasn't a very good one, but it was a choice. No one was holding my hands, using me as a weapon, forcing Peter onto my claws..." 

Derek chokes. His hands flex. He reaches for Stiles, holds him tightly enough to be reassuring and almost painful, and Stiles can't help but hug him back just as fiercely. 

"I thought I was a sociopath," Stiles confesses into the hair just behind Derek's ear. "I mean, killing isn't meant to be that easy. It should be an agonizing act of desperation or self-defense, not something you randomly consider while idling at a red light and watching a guy walk across the road. Except even as I was wondering what it would feel like to hit somebody with a car, I'd worry about what my dad would think and how much it would hurt him to have to arrest me. So I can't be one, right? Because a sociopath wouldn't give a shit about someone else's feelings."

_Right_ , Stiles wants to add, _Tell me I'm right_ , but Derek kisses him, licking into him, making him feel wanted and needed and the exact opposite of someone who doesn't care.

After the kiss ends, they stand there for a moment, foreheads touching. Then Derek goes to turn off the car. Stiles hikes himself up onto the hood, sitting there with his legs dangling. It's warm under his ass, reassuring somehow. 

Derek comes back with a couple of bottles of water, hands one to Stiles, and leans back against the car, close enough that their shoulders and arms are touching. 

When the silence has become too much, Stiles says, "Tell me about them. I don't even know what I'm coming back to."

For the first time, Derek looks uncomfortable. He picks at the label on the bottle instead of responding.

"Seriously, dude. I'm not that good with surprises."

"We're a pack. We've been taking care of each other," Derek says. The tips of his ears burn pink, so Stiles takes a drink of water to stop himself from pushing him. After far too long in Stiles' opinion, even if it was only a few seconds, Derek continues with, "You know about Scott. As for the others... Kira and Lydia are about to graduate from college, applying to grad school. Scott's still with Deaton, not doing anything more than talking about college."

"He's never been that big on ambition." Stiles takes another sip of water, shutting himself up again.

"I don't know if Scott told you, but Isaac came back last year. He's... better, got a job as a waiter at Amy's Diner and is working on getting a GED at night." Derek twitches and tears a strip of plastic label off the bottle. "He and Scott, they're sharing the loft."

"Seriously? Scott never told me he moved into his own place. I'll have to..." The implications catch up with Stiles, and he says, "Wait! Where are you staying?"

The pink deepens to red and spreads from the tips of Derek's ears down his neck. One of his claws punctures the bottle; water leaks over his fingers.. "I bought a house."

"That's great. Where'd you..." 

Stiles trails off and swallows hard, because Derek has gone completely still. His head is tilted in that way that says he's listening, and his nostrils are flared wide. 

"Who?" Stiles croaks out, his heart thudding a panicked beat, because Derek isn't moving, isn't getting all protective and growly and that can only mean one thing. He scrubs his trembling, clammy hands on his jeans, over and over, until Derek slides off the car, comes to stand between Stiles' legs. 

"I'm not ready," Stiles whispers. So many emotions are whirling around inside him that he feels like crying, throwing up, and smiling at the same time. 

Derek doesn't offer platitudes or stupid advice that Stiles can cling onto and throw back in his face. He simply takes Stiles' hands and presses a kiss on the backs of each of his wrists. 

Then it's too late to do anything or say anything, because even Stiles can hear the familiar sound of a car engine mingled with the noise from a police radio. He laces his fingers with Derek's, tightening his grip until his knuckles are white as he watches the car approach through the trees. 

Stiles' heart trips another beat, and he gulps in air, as his dad stops a few feet away and gets out slowly. He's seen his dad like this before, cautious and determined, the way he approaches a scared cat or a guy with a gun. 

"Hey," Stiles says. 

He gives his dad a little wave with both his and Derek's hands because he doesn't want to let go. Derek seems equally reluctant, but then he releases Stiles' hands and steps back so quickly that Stiles slides off the car and almost falls on his ass. 

Rolling his eyes, his dad says, "Never change."

"You either," Stiles says, and launches himself at his dad. He's caught by his dad's arms, and is held in them with the same strength that's been reassuring him since the first time he fell down and skinned his knee. An ache rolls through Stiles, and he clutches at his dad. "Love you," he mutters. "Missed you."

"Me too, kid." His dad rubs the back of Stiles' head, and Stiles relaxes into the forgiveness that he's being offered.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta: the lovely @eeyore9990
> 
> Thank you to everyone who stuck with me as I posted this story. I know that most of you are reading this after it's done, and these thanks (and the time between chapters) are meaningless but anyway... it means a lot to me that people kept on reading this when it was a WIP.

Rolling over, Stiles finds himself staring at the _wrong_ ceiling. It's way too clean, whiter than he remembers it ever being in his entire life, and he misses the dark brown rorschach stain that used to be above his head. Good times with Scott, getting root beer and coke all the way up there. The stucco isn't anywhere near as awesome, even with the gentle swirly pattern that he ends up tracking for far too long before he can drag his attention away. 

With a sigh, he smushes his pillow into a more comfortable lump. At least that's still the same, even if his dad had to dig it out of the linen closet, along with the Batman duvet cover his mom bought him all those years ago because he needed it. They stripped and remade the bed together last night, while his dad talked about how Derek — and sometimes the rest of the pack — helped him fix the place up and get through the list of repairs that Stiles and his dad spent years ignoring.

Resentment rises, dull and sluggish, from Stiles' belly into his throat, not quite as thick and poisonous as it was last night but still enough to choke him. The repairs were his, waiting for the right dad-and-me time, damn it, not for Derek or Scott or anyone else to butt in. 

Stiles swallows hard against a scream of frustration, clenches his hands tight and slams them down on the mattress. He's such a fucking asshole. It's not their fault he feels wrong-shaped with his jagged edges smoothed and changed by the years away. He doesn't quite belong in his house or his bedroom anymore, and that sucks so hard he can't even stand it.

"Oh my god," he mutters at himself, "drama much? You left, and life went on. What the fuck did you think would happen? Crying and wailing and rending of clothing? Your dad turning your room into a shrine and spending his days waiting for you to get your head out of your ass and come home?"

As if in answer, a familiar clatter comes from downstairs: the once-upon-a-time daily routine of his dad fumbling his heavy coffee mug and half-dropping it onto the tile counter. The early warning signal that his dad is done waiting for Stiles to wake up and is about to head up there.

The noise drags Stiles up and out of bed. He scratches at the trail of hair leading down from his belly button, hikes up his sleep pants, and is halfway downstairs before his brain catches up with him. He grins and hisses a near-silent, "Yes." The bounce in his step at the wash of _home_ that goes through him sends him stumbling down the rest of the stairs. 

His big toe's only throbbing a little and the limp's totally gone by the time he makes it to the kitchen where his dad is pouring coffee. His dad's already dressed in jeans and a black long-sleeved t-shirt, looking far more awake than any human being has a right to be before 10am. Stiles yawns, belatedly covering his mouth, and mumbles, "Unfair."

"Uh huh," his dad says with extreme skepticism. He peers at Stiles over the rims of his reading glasses, shakes his head, and hands him a _John Stilinski for Sheriff_ mug filled to the brim with milky sweet coffee. Then he takes his own mug over to the table, scraping the legs of the chair over the tile as he pulls it out, and flips open his paper to the crossword puzzle.

Stiles takes a sip of his coffee. It's bitter, despite all the sugar, and too strong, nasty as the stuff at the Sheriff's station, and the feeling of _home_ increases. He sits down next to his dad and glances at the paper. "15 across is Panda."

"Can't be," John says around the pen in his mouth, "because 9 down has to be Fore."

"No way." 

"Yes way." John inks it into the squares.

Leaning close enough that he's almost resting against John's shoulder, Stiles frowns at the clues. He says, "Koala" at the same time as John.

They argue vociferously over 24 down — Stiles doesn't care that it fits, Elian isn't a real word — 55 across and 47 down. And, just as always, Stiles' stomach growls while John is writing in the last answer. 

"Food?" Stiles asks hopefully as he refills their mugs with the last of the coffee. 

"Get dressed first." John folds the newspaper carefully into three and tosses it at the recycle bin. It lands with a rattle of cans and bottles. 

"Don't wanna," Stiles mumbles into his almost empty coffee. 

"You are if you want breakfast." John moves over to the sink and starts rinsing out the coffeemaker. "Pack meeting this morning, and you're not allowed to skip it." 

"I... no, I..." A flash of panic seizes Stiles' chest in a tight fist. He squeezes his eyes shut and clutches his mug because he's already broken more than enough of these over the years.

John's hand lands heavily on Stiles' shoulder and squeezes hard. Stiles draws in a painful, shaky breath and blinks. "They love you, son, and they're just glad to have you back."

Stiles nods and tries breathing again. 

"It's just you, me, Melissa, Scott, Isaac, and Derek. The girls and Liam will be at school for another week or so." 

"'Kay," Stiles manages to wheeze out. 

They stay like that for a couple more minutes, John giving his shoulder an occasional squeeze, until Stiles feels safe to stand up.

☽ o ☾

"Wrong way," John says when Stiles heads for the front door. Instead he motions for Stiles to follow him as he walks through the house and out the back door, along a paved path to a gate in the fence that Stiles knows wasn't there before.

"When did old fat a—" Stiles flinches at John's expression and continues with "—man Finley decide to stop charging people with trespassing for so much as going near the fence?"

"He didn't." John flips the latch. "He had a stroke about a year and a half ago. Had to sell the place to be able to afford assisted living."

The words _sell_ and _bought_ crash into each other in Stiles' brain and he blurts out, "Derek!"

"He decided the pack needed a home." John gives Stiles a look that he can't interpret as he says, "It's open to anyone in the pack who needs a place to stay." 

On the other side, the path leads to a terrace and a house that barely resembles the old Finley place that Stiles remembers. It's still one level, set in the middle of a huge piece of land that backs up onto the preserve, but that's about it. Two wings have been added to either side, one much smaller than the other, and it's been painted in colors that blend into the trees behind it. 

Stiles is still standing there, staring at the house and taking in all the changes, when a dark blur tumbles out of the house and races across the grass to tackle-hug him. 

"Asshole." Scott presses his nose into Stiles' neck. "You could have told me you were coming home."

"Hey," Stiles says, patting Scott's back. 

"Not that you told me you were leaving," Scott continues as if Stiles hadn't said anything. "Because you're an asshole." He pulls back so that Stiles can see his smile and his tears. "God, I missed you."

They're in the middle of another rib-crushing hug when Isaac joins in, and Stiles has to adjust his arms to hold onto both of them. Any words he might want to say, about not taking their shit or about how he's missed them too, are caught by the lump in his throat. 

When they finally let him go in a flurry of back pats and shoulder punches, Melissa is there. 

"Oh, Stiles." She gives him one of those looks that makes him want to explain that he really has been taking care of himself, as best he could anyway, before brushing his hair off his face and giving him a hug and a kiss on his forehead. "I expect you to see you for a check up on Monday." 

"But I don't..."

"And yet you'll do it anyway," she says, "because I asked you to."

A jolt of warmth goes through Stiles as he nods. It takes everything he has not to cry when he lets them herd him up the path toward the house. 

Derek's standing at the edge of the terrace. He's got his arms crossed over his purple henley, and his eyebrows are doing that thing that Stiles _knows_ is a smile.

"Hey," Stiles says. 

"Your bags are in your room," Derek says. "Sorry I didn't bring them over yesterday, but John made us promise to leave you guys alone."

Stiles' brain crashes to an abrupt halt at the end of Derek's first sentence. He flails a hand at Derek and rasps out, "My room?"

"It's one of the pack rooms and it's awesome," Scott says. 

"Oh." Stiles' heart drops out of his throat. He bites his lip to hold in something that feels way too much like disappointment and forces out a begrudging, "Thanks." 

Derek's shrug is something Stiles can't interpret. He starts to move toward Derek, wanting to ask him, to touch him and make sure that he didn't imagine what happened between them. 

"So," Stiles says as he stops in front of Derek. "I hear your house is awesome." 

"Tour after breakfast," John says, moving between them. "Melissa and I have to work today."

"We've just been waiting for you," Derek says, backing up a step and spinning on his heel. 

Breakfast turns out to be Melissa's huevos rancheros with hash browns and toast on the side, and some of the best coffee Stiles has ever had. He falls quickly back into joking with Scott and Isaac, and listening to John and Melissa tell stories about the craziness that is Beacon Hills even without supernatural dangers. He listens more though, letting everyone finish their stories without interrupting, and he watches them. 

The easy way Scott and Isaac touch each other, the closeness of their chairs, and the way they automatically sit down next to each other, make Stiles ache with a sense of loss, of something that's moved beyond his reach. He's on Scott's other side, but he can feel the difference. Scott's attention isn't such a heavy weight or as demanding; it's nothing like the abandonment he felt when Scott was with Allison, but it's an equally tangible change. 

His dad and Melissa haven't changed at all. John's got more grey hair, on his head and in his beard, and they both have a few new lines on their faces. John still gives Melissa that same shy smile, and she still nags him about his health. Best friends forever, Stiles muses, just like their sons. 

Then there's Derek, who's looking more relaxed than Stiles has ever seen him, sitting in a lazy sprawl in the chair at the head of the table. He's not completely quiet either, adding in a few of his own — dry as a bone, sarcastic and funny as hell — comments here and there, which tells Stiles more about how things have improved in the pack than anything else. 

After the last strawberry cheesecake bar is gone, Scott grabs Stiles' hand and says, "Come on."

Isaac stays at the table, chatting with Derek, as Scott drags Stiles off down a hallway lined with doors to a room full of windows at the far end. There are more couches here, a TV, and a couple of game consoles. Behind them, Stiles can hear the unmistakable sounds of a baseball game, and he relaxes at the signal that no one's going to intentionally listen in. 

Scott lets go of Stiles' hand as they enter the bright, sun-lit space and goes over to the windows. He stays there for a few seconds, with his back to Stiles. His broad shoulders hold less tension than they did in high school, but when he turns around, he rubs a hand over the back of his neck and bounces lightly on his toes. He can't look Stiles in the eyes, which is all the warning Stiles should need. 

"Are you staying?"

The question takes Stiles' breath away. He rocks back on his heels as if Scott had punched him. His jaw works and he wrings his hands as he tries to figure out what to say. He finally manages, "Uhh," and then, "Yes?"

"How is that a question?" Scott frowns. "I mean, either you're staying or you're not."

"I want to stay," Stiles says. "Like I totally plan to stay. I just, you know, could go to college or do a year in Europe or get possessed again or like..." his voice rises to a squeak, " _life_ could seriously happen. You know what it's like with all the monsters of the week and shit."

Eyes widening, Scott stares at him for a few seconds before grinning and jumping on him. Stiles staggers under his weight, but he's grinning too hard to care. He's missed this.

Scott's telling him, for the third time, to _never ever do that again_ , when John comes to the doorway. "Melissa and I are heading out in a few minutes," he says, looking like that's the last thing he wants to be doing. 

"Okay," Stiles says. 

"I'll go say goodbye to my mom." Scott gives Stiles a slap on his back and bounds out of the room.

Shaking his head at Scott, a fond smile on his face, John comes over to give Stiles a hug. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he tells Stiles. His expression turns serious as he adds, "And don't feel like you have to come home tonight. Just be careful for both of you, because sometimes I think Derek forgets that he needs to take care of himself as well as everyone else."

Stiles nods, swallowing down all the denials, because really, there's no point. "I will," he says, voice thick. 

"Whatever he did, he's more than made up for it." 

Without waiting for Stiles to respond, John changes the subject to the new computer system and how glad he is that Danny came back and decided he wanted to be a cop. He slings his arm over Stiles' shoulder as they walk back to the main room for more goodbyes.

After John and Melissa leave, Isaac brings out cans of coke for himself and Scott and bottles of water for Derek and Stiles, and a few open bags of chip that he drops on the coffee table. Then he settles down at the opposite end of the sectional to Derek. Scott throws himself into a chair, hooking his legs over one arm and sitting at an angle so that he can see the Dodgers play on a TV that's so big that Stiles is almost sorry he knows how big Derek's dick is because the overcompensation jokes would've been stellar. 

The score flashes on the screen along with the 0-3 stats for the batter. Scott starts yelling at the pitcher, and Isaac throws popcorn at him. Derek rolls his eyes at them, props his bare feet up on the table, and picks up his e-reader. He seems to be focused on whatever he's reading, but half his attention is clearly on the game.

Stiles stays standing where he is. As he watches them, he picks at the label on his untouched water bottle. His brain starts whirling around and around the same track. If he sits next to Derek, he'll be making an announcement about their relationship to Scott and Isaac, whether there is one or not, but if he sits somewhere else, he'll be telling Derek that he doesn't want a relationship. That would be a total shit thing to do to him. 

He sighs and his thumbnail skids through the condensation on the bottle, tearing through the label. Neither Scott nor Isaac seem to notice the noise, but Derek does. He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow at Stiles. The gestures send Stiles' thoughts screaming to a halt, and a sudden realization brings a grin to his face. 

_They have a relationship!_

Or at least they will if they keep on doing what they're doing. And Stiles totally wants that: for them to keep on keepin' on.

He uncaps his water, takes a quick swig, and starts walking. Step after step, he moves between Scott's chair and the couch and skirts the coffee table. He slows down when he nears Derek. His heart speeds up and he licks his lips, as Derek raises his legs to let him past. 

When he sits down, Derek slides his arm along the back of the couch behind Stiles. It's ridiculously old-fashioned, and Stiles can't help elbowing Derek's ribs. 

"Asshole," Derek whispers but his eyebrows tell a different story, especially when Stiles puts his feet up on the table next to Derek's. 

"Takes one to know one," Stiles replies with a smug grin. 

Scott snorts with laughter, and Stiles flips him off. 

The tab from Isaac's can flies across the room and hits Stiles in the middle of his forehead. "Hurt him and I'll fuck you up," Isaac says, his tone casual enough to send a shard of ice down Stiles's spine. "And that goes for both of you."

"You can try," Derek growls and bares his fangs. 

Stile elbows him again. "We're not going to hurt each other," he says. "So you can stop with the idle threats already."

In response, Isaac shrugs and pops a claw to rip into a bag of potato chips. 

They settle down to watch the game after that. Scott heckles the umpire and the players, occasionally trying to get Stiles or Isaac to agree with him and not them. They're in the middle of an argument over some call that Stiles doesn't really remember when his chest constricts with the familiarity and the comfort of it all. He takes a deep breath, forces air in and out of his lungs, and everything eases up, but it leaves him restless and unable to sit still. 

He pushes up from the couch and heads for the kitchen. Bottle of water in hand, he rests his back against the counter and stares out the window at the backyard and the trees that tower over the high fence. They're his friends, his family. He's glad they're so happy to see him, that they still love him and want him around — he really is — but he doesn't know what to do with their simple acceptance. Over the years, he prepared himself for arguments, accusations, and resentment, but not for this.

"Hey." Derek moves almost silently through the kitchen and crowds into Stiles. He pushes Stiles back against the counter and takes the mug from him. With only a short wall between them and everyone else, it's not even remotely private, given werewolf hearing, but Derek doesn't seem to care. Derek's hand is gentle as he cups Stiles' face and stares into his eyes as if he can read Stiles' soul. The weirdest part is that it doesn't feel invasive; it's a relief.

"You're okay," Derek says. It's half-question and half-statement, and full of an emotion that matches something deep inside Stiles.

"Yeah." He presses his cheek into Derek's touch, then turns his head and kisses Derek's palm. His skin is slightly calloused, rough against Stiles' lips. He brushes a second kiss, butterfly light, against the base of Derek's thumb. Stiles can feel the wash of goosebumps chasing a shiver through Derek. It's a total tease that makes Stiles want to find out how to wreck him. 

Stiles pulls away and curls a hand around Derek's neck, running his thumb against the edge of Derek's jaw. "I want this," he says. "I want you for more than just one night." 

"Good." Derek's eyes flash werewolf bright.

Arousal flares through Stiles, mingled with so many emotions that his words tangle into a stuttered mess in his throat. Words he's said and some he's not ready to say, because his brain needs time to catch up with his heart. He surges forward and silences himself in a kiss, in a hard press of lips and a scrape of teeth, in a possessive lick and thrust of tongue that turns the words into incomprehensible sounds of need and want.

"Yo, guys," Scott calls out, breaking them apart. 

"You going?" 

"Yeah, uh, Isaac and me... we have to do... umm... stuff. Important stuff. And, you know, bedrooms? Soundproofed for a reason. But, anyway, we're out of here. So out of here. Okay?" The door closes with a bang on Scott's last word.

"We should," Derek begins to say.

"Yes, we should." Stiles cuts off anything else Derek might say with another kiss, hooking his fingers in Derek's front belt loops and stopping him from backing away. A twitch of Derek's hips rubs Stiles' palm over Derek's dick, and Stiles tugs him closer.

Their dicks brush through the heavy denim of their jeans. Derek growls at the touch, and the sound, the way it vibrates through Derek's chest, drives Stiles into him. Stiles bites at Derek's lips in a shock of _oh fuck yes_ as Derek slides a hand down the back of Stiles' jeans and squeezes his ass. 

Stiles writhes, rubbing against Derek, feeling the hard line of Derek's dick against his own, but it's not enough, can't be enough when there are layers and layers of clothes between them. "Can't," he mutters and grits his teeth as he forces himself to slow down so he can undo the seemingly never-ending buttons of Derek's jeans. 

"Yes," Stiles crows as he gets the last one and, "Oh fuck yes," as Derek takes his hand.

Derek licks Stiles' hand. He curls his tongue around Stiles' fingers, one by one, wetting them. "Do it," he says and then shoves Stiles' jeans and underwear down. 

They kiss again, as Stiles wraps his hand around both their dicks. He jerks them both, hard and fast, swiping his hand over the heads of their dicks every other tug, slicking his hand, over and over. 

As Stiles gets close, so damn, close, Derek growls again. His dick pulses in Stiles' grip. His fingers dig into Stiles' ass, press against his hole, and Stiles comes, his voice cracking on Derek's name. 

They stand there for a few seconds, foreheads resting together, both breathing heavily, until Stiles trusts himself enough to let go of their dicks. He feels the loss of Derek's skin against his almost immediately. It's terrifying and wonderful, and he raises his head to say something.

Then he feels the icky sticky grossness of come on his hand, sees the blob that's caught in the notch at the base of Derek's neck. He wrinkles his nose. "That was amazing," he says, "but..." 

Raising his hand, he spreads his fingers and displays the mess on them. "You've got a bathroom, right?"

"Several. There's even one off your room."

Stiles glances down at his hand, swallows hard, and takes a chance. "What about your room?"

Derek's grin is slow and downright predatory. "That one's even got a jacuzzi bathtub."

"And if I want to use that one? Will I still be able to keep my own room?"

"Any room in the house you want." Derek says it like a promise. "No matter where you decide to sleep."

Something that feels like happiness, and maybe a little bit like love, zings through Stiles. He can't offer that to Derek though, not yet. So he kisses him, soft and slow instead. 

When he pulls back and sees the matching happiness in Derek's eyes, Stiles just can't resist. He gives Derek a smile, as cheeky and mischievous as he can manage, and then he smears his sticky hand over Derek's stubble and pushes away.

"Race you," he says over his shoulder and starts to run for the door he's pretty sure leads to Derek's bedroom, laughing as Derek chases after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kids and even some adults run away from home all the time. Sometimes the reasons are clear, sometimes it's because of family, and sometimes it's one too many shitty things piled on top of each other that make it impossible to stay where we are and keep ourselves together.
> 
> This story is for those of us who ran away and made it back home, whether that home is with our birth families or one we created for ourselves.


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